Which is not to imply that this Jonathan is prone to murderous boat trips; it's just an awful pun. Sorry about that! Actually, Lethem published a new book this spring, The Disappointment Artist, and the Guardian's Sean O'Hagan isn't a bit disappointed:

In many ways, then, this is a book about how a person can come to define himself as much through the cultural artefacts he absorbs in his formative years as through the people he is bound to, or bonds with, along the way. It celebrates a wide range of what some might consider 'low-brow' artefacts: the wilfully offensive cartoon art of Robert Crumb, the art-pop doodles of Brian Eno and David Byrne, the very different kinds of emphatically American films made by John Ford and John Cassavetes.

In Lethem's world, it all adds up. These are the things that made him into not just a writer, but a functioning human being, no longer nerdish or obsessive, but alert—and honest—enough to reclaim and make sense of his younger, stranger self.